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He knows it's a safe bet suing them since they'd rather settle out of court than admit to having a Prince song on their iPod. That should teach people for bulk downloading without checking what they are downloading. If you've downloaded 30,000 to 50,000 songs then there's a good chance there's a Prince song in the wood pile so you might want to cull them out.

No! Property is imaginary. (Do try to keep up.) Basically it doesn't matter how much it cost to produce a program, a movie or a song: because it's imaginary property, you can give copies to whoever you want. All IP licences [gnu.org] are unenforceable relics of a bygone era, so pirate away!

Well if we can get everybody here on Slash to keep this little secret to ourselves, I'm sure there won't be any problems with the MPAA, DMCA or any other organizations harassing the company with lawsuits, etc. To quote the eloquent and charismatic [wikipedia.org]Steve Jobs, "Loose lips sink ships".

From what I can gather from TFA the only thing that is happening with this technology is that it is merely making a copy of the analogue version of a song. With 64-bit computers that support hardware and software base Trusted Computing Platform, and the 64-bit versions of Windows which support TCP software and hardware, this application may become antiquated in the not to distant future.

Not trusted computing, but Vista attempts to plug the analog hole by not alowing high fidelity analog output (at leats of video). Trusted computing could be used to prevent driver-level work-arounds, but that's the direction Microsoft took. Instead they just invalidate all of your DRMed content if they detect a driver not on their whitelist (at least according to the NEtflix story a few weeks back).

Pardon? How does trusted computing plug the analogue hole, and what has 64 bits got to do with it?

The 64-bits is just a product of history. Microsoft's plan is to have all there 64-bit operating systems support TCP, and Microsoft plans to phase out all their 32-bit operating systems (much like they did with their 16-bit operating systems) circa 2010. One of the goals of TCP is to in fact "plug" the analogue hole. The idea being that hardware would be harder to crack than software, and the hardware thus helping the OS to police the software and policies set forth within, that designate user rights (such as copying). As lgw points out, the analogue hole is itself not fully plugged ATM (probably only because of compatibility issues with TCP High Def monitors and video cards for example (and those that are not fully compatible yet [we here such marketing phrases as HD-compatible for example]), and the marketing and PR issues that ensue when people cannot adequately use the products they purchased).

Pardon? How does trusted computing plug the analogue hole, and what has 64 bits got to do with it?

One of the goals of TCP is to in fact "plug" the analogue hole. The idea being that hardware would be harder to crack than software, and the hardware thus helping the OS to police the software and policies set forth within, that designate user restrictions (such as copying).

There, fixed that for you.
Remember, DRM stands for Digital Restrictions Management. It doesn't give you any rights, it at most takes away some. DRM just adds restrictions.

Section 1201 divides technological measures into two categories: measures that prevent unauthorized access to a copyrighted work and measures that prevent unauthorized copying of a copyrighted work. Making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent either category of technological measure is prohibited in certain circumstances, described below. As to the act of circumvention in itself, the provision prohibits circumventing the first category of technological measures, but not the second.

This distinction was employed to assure that the public will have the continued ability to make fair use of copyrighted works. Since copying of a work may be a fair use under appropriate circumstances, section 1201 does not prohibit the act of circumventing a technological measure that prevents copying. By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited.

I am not a lawyer, or by no means competent in reading laws. However, from what I can gather, unless the DRM is designed to prevent you from accessing the content (e.g. napster after your subscription expires), then you may circumvent for fair use. It actually does prohibit "making or selling devices or services that are used to circumvent either category of technological measure", but not owning or being in possession of such goods or services. That means that as long as DVD Jon's actions are legal in whichever country he chooses to stay, he can continue to make and distribute his DRM-circumventing programs, and we can legally download and use them, so long as we don't distribute the programs ourselves (e.g. give it to a friend).

Firstly, that's not the DMCA. It's a Copyright Office summary, which is interesting but not law. Secondly:

By contrast, since the fair use doctrine is not a defense to the act of gaining unauthorized access to a work, the act of circumventing a technological measure in order to gain access is prohibited.

Most interesting copying, like excerpting or converting to another format, requires access. You might think that the rightful owner of a copy of a work is implicitly authorized to access it in any way the

Please note that this Privacy Statement is not a binding contract and does not create any legal rights. It is made available to you so that you can make an informed decision about using the doubleTwist website and services after considering the steps doubleTwist takes to protect your private personal information

doubleTwist" means the SpiceFlow Corporation, a company incorporated under the laws of Cayman Islands, having its registered office at PO Box 309GT, M&C Corporate Services Limited, Ugland House, South Church St, George Town, Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, and any SpiceFlow Corporation subsidiaries or affiliated companies.

You acknowledge and agree that doubleTwist, in its sole discretion, may modify or discontinue or suspend Your ability to use any version of the doubleTwist Software, and/or disable any doubleTwist Software You may already have accessed or installed without any notice to You, for the repair, improvement, and/or upgrade of the underlying technology or for any other justifiable reason...

We may use Personal Data to: provide services and customer support You request; resolve disputes, collect fees, and troubleshoot problems; enforce our Terms of Service; customize, measure, and improve doubleTwist Software, VoIP Service and Website content and layout; inform You about targeted marketing, service updates, and promotional offers (unless You opt out)

I'm hoping they add PDF support someday. I have a few PDFs using a DRM system called "KeyringPDF" that makes it pretty much impossible to backup (although they have a scary, use-once backup "bookmark" system that you can use to reclaim your media), and you can't even do the screenshot trick -- your screen captures nothing but "Protected by KeyringPDF". I finally backed it up to JPGs via a second copy of WinXP and "Virtual PC 2007", though.

Yes, it does appear to be a centralized way of converting A to B. And contrary to the article title, it does not kill DRM -- it just converts what you rightfully own to another format. You still have to purchase those iTunes songs in order to convert them, you can't just convert what you find on the net, thus is no different than using WMP or iTunes to burn to disk then rip the disks to files (if those two programs don't convert directly to MP3 or your preferred flavor without the intermediary disk step).

On a whim, I tried installing this. Once the setup is complete, it wants my e-mail address to create an "account" for me... and it installs a couple of other programs I didn't agree to. Sorry, not interested - deleted.

ffdshow is an open source video codec. This sounds more like an issue with their uninstaller. I'm curious to see what the other "programs" are that people are complaining about.... I guess that's why I run Windows in a VM these days. Easy to roll back in case something goes wrong.

Any technical reasons why you do not want dotNet on your Microsoft platform?

Too many bad experiences with some applications requiring one version of dotNET, and different applications requiring another version. In both such cases, the apps wouldn't work with the different versions that other apps used. Also, had the bad experience of a Trojan that had installed itself at the same time that dotNET was installing, which made me even more dissapointed in dotNET. I then uninstalled all dotNET versions, and uni

dot net is a mess. I'd rather not have it, but if you want to have developer tools that aren't completely out of date, you're forced to install it. And there are *almost* as many versions of the runtime as their versions of vista. (Time will tell.)

Another thing I forgot. The most recent.NET runtime that was installed enabled an "optimization service" by default in the background. Apparently it goes through bytecode and crunches SOMETHING for a long peroid of time (it noticably degraded system performance.) It's really annoying if you're not a.NET developer of have absolutely no intention of ever touching it.

You're probably referring to the ngen service. ngen converts bytecode assemblies into native code; basically prejits the application. If the bytecode assembly is modified then ngen needs to update the native version. The service is there to basically keep the user from having to do a "ngen update"...and so stupid developers can't forget to do it when they update their code.

Its a good thing. Its Pre-JITing (creating NGEN binaries) some of the base class libraries. Earlier versions of.Net did this as well, but they didn't have a mechanism to update the ngen versions of these libraries when you installed a later version of the library.

So.Net has a service which does this, so if you install a new DLL that has been pre-JITed it automatically updates the pre-JITed version.

Umm.. after reading them relatively carefully, I don't think I'll be using that software. Basically, you give us your info, we update ourselves on what you're doing, we send it to the Cayman Islands and we promise promise promise never to give it to anyone else unless you agree, we're bought, subpoena'd or otherwise compromised. Somehow... I don't think so.
Peace.

"The software automatically plays the song files in the background (sans volume) and re-records them as MP3 files so they can be transferred to any device."This is not stripping DRM, this amounts to a generational loss of quality when its decompressed and recompressed. Why would someone known for cracking DRM protections start a company that recodes the files with loss of quality instead of strip the DRM from the existing file? Isn't this the same thing as connecting a SP/DIF cable to your output and feed

Decompressing does not cause a loss of quality. Recompressing in a lossy format may, but there are a variety of lossless formats you can use if you find that you can hear a difference (I can with some files, but not with most), or if you want to retain the option of recompressing the music with a different codec in the future.

Now dont you guys do anything that we would do...
From their EULA (http://www.doubletwist.no/dt/Legal/EULA.dt)
"C. You agree not to circumvent, disable or otherwise interfere with security-related features of the doubleTwist Website and/or Services or features that prevent or restrict use or copying of any Content or enforce limitations on use of the doubleTwist Website and/or Services, and the Communications Content made available by use of the Website and/or Services."
I guess only DVD Jon is allowed to

The software automatically plays the song files in the background (sans volume) and re-records them as MP3 files so they can be transferred to any device. Note: DoubleTwist only does this for songs you own or are authorized to play in iTunes.

So it is basically doing a software based line-out to line-in (aka loopback) encode? How is this anything special? I have done this for years using nothing but simple audio tools. Or is it doing something more intelligent? (I fail to see how though as it is still lossy -> lossy conversion).

It's special because of two things, the history of the name and the goal of the product. DVD Jon is creating a friendly all encompasing media bridge between online media, local collections and portable devices that "your parents could use" according to the article. This means mass adoption if it works and doesn't get legally raped.

Well, if you must know, there are magical anti-DRM pixies inside the code that lovingly polish every bit as it passes through the transcoding process just to get its guard down, then they sprinkle them with magic pixie dust to remove the DRM, and finish the process with a nice close shave and boot polish. It's a trade secret though so don't tell anyone.

Really though - a DRM remover is a DRM remover, and this just goes to demonstrate that you will *always* be able to break DRM with the analog hole, the whole thing is such a joke.

I hate to break it to you, but ANY conversion from AAC is going to be lossy->lossy. There's not way around that because the compression algorithms are different. The best you could hope to achieve would be to convert from DRM'd AAC to non-DRM'd AAC. That's the only way you can avoid the quality loss incurred by a format conversion.

For a similar example in non-DRM terms: take an image. The less simple it is the quicker this will become obvious, but even on a photograph it will show soon. Save it as JPG. OK, now save it as PNG. Save it as JPG again. Go back and forth like this several times. Open and view the image. Notice that regardless of the fact that there was no-DRM involved and this was a completely legit "no workaround" conversion between formats, it looses information every time.

Yes I understand the technical differences between AAC and MP3. It was just this application seemed to be advertised as a DRM remover not a frontend to a few transcoding applications. I was hoping it would be a bit more impressive by doing as you say and removing the DRM from AAC files, not just playing them in the background and encoding them.

There is something wrong with your JPEG encoder. Which isn't unlikely, since most of them fail this test, but there is no reason an encoder could not do the conversion you suggest (jpg>png>jpg) losslessly, because png is a lossless format.

From TFA:"DoubleTwist also recognizes and imports all iTunes playlists and will read instantly which ones are protected by digital rights management technology. The software automatically plays the song files in the background (sans volume) and re-records them as MP3 files so they can be transferred to any device. Note: DoubleTwist only does this for songs you own or are authorized to play in iTunes."

So it will create DRM-free files but only for files that you are "authorized" to play. So it's not like some

Of course the whole point is that people can use this to share any kind of media with pretty much anyone

It could also be used (and correct me if I'm wrong here, i'm going way out on a limb) for being able to play your music on any device that you want to. Incompatibilities have killed my (legally bought) media before, and that's what I'd use this software for. If I wanted to freely share my any kind of media with anyone else, I'd just download it with limewire or bittorrent.

Slips out of a tricky situation with regards to breaking DRM. By using a already owned DRM key it doesn't have to break the protection. This keeps the software maker (you know who) out of any sticking 'breaking their encryption issues'. This makes it fairly immune to DMCA attacks thus reducing it to an automated method of converting files. These already methods already exist and it just makes the task easy.

I've been using something like this for awhile, its called "dd" (run as root for extra goodness).

Yes, DD which, as it's name suggests, makes an exact duplicate of whatever it is copying, including whatever DRM is in the file.

And while there are a lot of tools for stripping DRM available Jon is saying he wants to bring it to the masses. To quote (paraphrase?) "I want your parents to be able to do it".

It's not about hacking DRM because it should all be free, it's not about mass distribution of "pirated" (Arhh!) material, it's about making the exercising of fair use rights by consumers as easy as it was with VHS/Cassettes/CDROM (the real CDROM, the one that is allowed to use the logo).

Sending copyrighted files to your friends over facebook is not fair use by any sane defintion of the word.. it's *all* about distribution of pirated material. The only reason it's not mass distribution is facebook sucks too much to manage it.

So, if/when it becomes possible to create objects from electronic signals easily enough for my parents to download and run the "make me a Volvo" script, will it be illegal for them to do so? Are my Star Trek dreams of nutritionally balanced lasagna whenever I want a foregone fantasy?

Beither copyright nor patents prevent you from making your own Volvo to drive around town, or to give to family members. Just don't sell it. Trademark law might have something to say about attaching the "Volvo" logo to the result.

Distributing the "Volvo recipe" to friends with replicators would run afoul of IP law in the distribution step, not the manufacturing step.